Rex Ebrius Est
by or.is.it
Summary: Waking up in a strange room, a hung-over Thorongil tries to piece together his memories of the previous night. Not to be taken too seriously.


This worked better in my head, when Viggo Mortensen and a young John Noble were acting it out for me; I hope you enjoy it anyway.

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Rex Ebrius Est

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_At last he got leave of the Steward and gathered a small fleet and he came to Umbar unlooked-for by night […]. But when they came back to Pelargir, to men's grief and wonder, he would not return to Minas Tirith, where great honour awaited him._

_[…]_

_Therefore later, when all was made clear, many believed that Denethor, who was subtle in mind and looked further and deeper than other men of his day, had discovered who this stranger Thorongil in truth was […]._

_- The Lord of the Rings, Appendices_

Aragorn opened his eyes and stared at an unfamiliar ceiling. A tiny man with a hammer was pounding away at his skull like an overexcited dwarf in a mithrilmine.

Had daylight always been this bright?

He discarded the thought of sitting up: the top of his head might fall off if he tried. Half-heartedly he contemplated the notion that he had been injured in battle; but he knew he was lying to himself. The small furry creature that had curled up and died in his mouth told the dreadful truth: he had gotten utterly drunk.

Drawing the blanket over his head to block out the painful sunlight, he fished in his mind for some recollection of the previous night. He remembered being in a dark, confined space. Some sort of tunnel?

"Y've lost y'r way!"

The man walking in front of him turned around and tried to focus on Aragorn. "No I 'vn't! I happ'n to know exacl'y where I am. Righ' here."

Aragorn considered this for a second and then pointed at a ledge protruding from the wall. "See this? This little thing righ' here? This little rock sort o' thing? You see tha'? I've hit m' head on it. Twice. When we were here before. We runnin' in circles!"

Denethor shook his head and turned back again. "Nah. It's different rocky things. Jus' look the same t' you, 'cause y'r so dr'nk."

"Bloody circles," Aragorn muttered as he followed the torchlight zig-zagging down the tunnel.

Surely that must've been a dream. Why would he ever get drunk with Denethor? The man hated him. They wouldn't just go down to the tavern and have a pint together. And which tunnel were they running around in, in the middle of the night?

"The Bell and Eel is j'st round the corner. They make th' bes' meat pie."

"I'm n't going to a tavern wi' a name l'ke tha'. B'sides, we said we'd go home after the las' two. I've g't a wife 'nd kid to think abou'." Denethor grabbed Aragorn by the sleeve and began pulling him down the street.

Aragorn glanced longingly over his back. "B't I want meat pie!"

Denethors energetic stride turned into a not-quite-so-energetic stagger after a couple of steps. He glanced up to the citadel looming over the city. "Tha's a long walk. Next gate is all th' way on the other side, too."

Aragorn turned back to where they came from. "I agree. Let's go g't some pie instead."

"This 's all y'r fault! Why'd you drag me down all th' way to th' second circle anyway?" Denethor demanded.

"F'r the pie?" Aragorn suspected. He stared up. The Tower of Ecthelion seemed to be decidedly wobbly on its feet tonight. "Would be much faster if we could j'st go straigh' up," he said. "Wouldn't h've to bother with all th' gates."

Denethor nodded. "Let's do tha' then." He pulled Aragorn towards an alley that ended abruptly against the wall to the third circle.

"You goin' to fly? 'Cause I'm not climbing tha' wall tonight. Not without my pie, anyway."

"Nah. Better. We'll go through th' mountain." He produced a bunch of keys from his pocket and proceeded to unlock a small door in the wall. "See, this part here, this part of Mount Minu-, Minollo-, Mindolluin - the part with th' city on it? There's a whole lot 'f secret tunnels. It's like one of those Rohirric cheeses. In case, you know, emergencies and such. Like now. We c'n go straight up."

Aragorn stared into the doorway. "'S pretty dark in there. I'll get a torch."

The excited dwarf in his head was starting to be slightly less excited and Aragorn ventured out from under the blanket to have a look around the room. So he had been drinking with Denethor. Stranger things have happened. He was, however, growing more and more ill at ease about waking up in an unknown room. With some relief he noticed that apart from his boots he was still fully dressed. Nothing to worry about there, then.

A group of noisy men made their way past Aragorn through the dingy room as he was trying to catch the barmaid's eye to bring another round. He grinned at Denethor. "Go on, then, and I want all the dirty details."

Denethor's eyes were already quite hazy as he took a deep drought from his mug."Well, she was an experienced woman of nobility, forced into marriage with some upstart early in life. He had little regard for her and she had taken to making conquests of her own.

I was sixteen when my father took me to some ball the Prince of Dol Amroth was throwing. She was there too, and we shared a dance or two. It was late and I had had an ample amount of wine when I retired to my room. I began to undress only to find her already standing there, dressed in nothing but, well nothing, really. When we left the next morning, she happily added deflowering the Steward's eldest son to her trophy-wall."

Aragorn winced. So, embarrassing stories had been exchanged. He could only hope that Denethor's memory was at least as fragmented as his.

He finally dared to sit up and was quite pleased to find that the top of his head had not, in fact, fallen off. From this perspective, the room looked slightly familiar. Judging from the view out the window, they had made it back to the citadel last night.

How had this whole thing started? He faintly remembered bringing Denethor into the Three Barrels.

Aragorn ushered Denethor to a quiet table in a corner and set down a pint in front of him. He was feeling lightheaded. Tonight, the world was his friend.

"This is the Three Barrels; the only tavern in the city, no, in all of Gondor, that serves the delicious Bramble's Brown Ale of Bramble's Brewery in Bree. Go on, try it. It's the best."

"Bree, huh?" Denethor carefully took a sip from his mug. He raised an eyebrow. "Well, I have to admit that it is really quite good."

Aragorn smiled. The taste of the ale brought back wonderful memories of home. If he closed his eyes now, he could smell the smoke-filled air of the Prancing Pony around him.

"I would like to apologize for my harsh behaviour earlier. It is not your fault that my father thinks so highly of you and so little of me, and I should not hold you accountable for it."

Aragorn frowned. "Don't say that. It's not true. And isn't it normal for a father to demand more from his own son then from another?"

Denethor snorted. "Oh please. He calls you the son he never had. And besides, no, it's not normal. I bet your father thinks only the best of you."

Aragorn shook his head. "No. He thinks I'm childish and incapable of taking responsibility. When he found out about the one I love, he said she was too good for me, and that I was unworthy of any woman."

"That is harsh, indeed."

Denethor drained his pint and smiled mischievously. "So, the great Thorongil does have a woman waiting for him. I can all but hear the disappointed cries of many a Gondorian lady. Do tell me about her."

Aragorn smiled and signalled the bartender to bring more ale. "She is wonderful. The most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on.

I was young when I met her, barely twenty. One warm summer night, I was walking through the woods, content with the world, singing the Lay of Luthien, when I saw her standing on a clearing. I was so stunned by her appearance, that at first I thought my song had somehow come alive before my eyes.

Turns out she was my step-fathers daughter, who had been living with her grandparents."

Denthor blinked. "That sounds complicated."

Aragorn nodded. "It is. And although she also fell in love with me, he will not give us his blessings. Says if I wanted to earn her hand in marriage, I'd have to defeat Sauron and claim the throne."

"That's an odd thing to say."

Denethor shook his head and raised his glass. "Here's to not listening to your father. If I had listened to the marital advice of mine, I would never have met the amazing woman that is my wife. I say go ahead and marry her anyway."

"I drink to that."

Aragorn sighed. Elrond would have a thing or two to say if he heard him talk like that. Oh well. But had he just out of the blue decided to take Denethor for a drink and have a heart-to-heart about unsympathetic fathers?

No. There was something else, something that happened earlier that day. The Steward had asked him to a meeting.

Aragorn sat in the Steward's study and was growing impatient. Ecthelion had left twenty minutes ago to fetch his son and still hadn't returned.

He watched Boromir play with his stackable cubes on the floor. For the past ten minutes or so he had enthusiastically tried to stuff a large cube into a smaller one.

Aragorn couldn't say what amazed him more: the stupidity of not trying a different approach when his original one had failed to produce a result after about a hundred or so attempts; or his incredible determination - as if he trusted that eventually, reality had to give up and let his stubbornness have its way.

He finally took pity on the child, kneeled down next to him and gently took the cubes from him.

"Here. You have to do it the other way around. See? This one goes into that one. Now you try it."

Boromir looked down on the cubes and then up into Aragorn's face. The corner of his mouth twitched.

Oh no, thought Aragorn. No, you don't. He hurriedly took the cubes apart again and placed them in Boromir's lap. But it was too late. With a sound that could summon the armies of the West all by itself, the boy broke out crying.

Showing impeccable timing, Denethor chose that exact moment to come through the door, accompanied by his father. Taking in the scenery, he swooped up Boromir from the floor and threw Aragorn an icy look before he began to comfort his son. Aragorn had to restrain himself from saying anything; protestations of "I know what it looks like, but I didn't steal his toys," or "I wasn't going to harm him, honest!" would probably only have made things worse.

"Well, isn't he quite the stroppy lad," Ecthelion said with considerable pride in his voice.

"Now, boys," he continued, referring to Aragorn and Denethor, "we're having a little problem with the supply dispatch to Osgiliath." He lifted Boromir from his father's arm, sat him down on the desk and promptly started to feed him treacle toffees from one of his drawers.

With a side-glance to Aragorn, Denethor said: "I believe the Osgiliath supply is my responsibility. Is there any reason… Please stop giving him these sweets, father. Is there any reason for Thorongil's presence during this discussion?"

"Of course there is," Ecthelion answered, not taking his attention off his grandson. "You are going to fix this, and Thorongil will show you how it's done."

Aragorn winced. Denethor had no love for him as it was, and the Steward seemed to go out of his way to make the situation between them worse.

"He's leaving for Umbar tomorrow morning, so you want to do this tonight. And Denethor," he finally looked at his son, "Thorongil is kindly offering his expertise to help you out in a tight spot. You will show him respect and gratitude for that."

Had Denethor's head exploded at that moment, Aragorn would not have been surprised. The man was shaking with suppressed rage and his composure was hanging by a thread. With much effort, he pressed out an icy "As you wish, father."

"Jolly good. Run along, then, boys. I'll take care of the little nipper." With that, he gave Boromir one last toffee and ushered the two men out of the room.

Yes, Aragorn thought. That was it. It had been an utterly miserable evening, working with Denethor, and the Steward's son had been so bent on disagreeing with everything Aragorn said, that they didn't get anywhere.

That's when Aragorn had decided to save the day by breaking out the wine; and just to be sure it had some effect, he had added a little Haradic spice. A spice that loosened the tongue and made you feel happy as a Hobbit in a giant larder.

In retrospective, he thought, that might have been a really bad idea.

It had worked quite well at the beginning: after only one glass, Denethor had put his hostility aside and within half an hour they had a suitable solution for the supply problem. But then Aragorn had suggested going down to the Three Barrels for a pint of Bramble's Brown, and Denethor had happily agreed and things had taken a turn downhill.

He decidedly pushed aside the thought of what intimate stories he had shared with Denethor during this drinking spree, when the door opened and Finduilas entered the room.

"Ah, you're awake," she said with a mocking smile on her face. "When the guards dragged you two in here last night, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get you up on time."

On time? Aragorn thought. On time for what? And slowly, a thought that had been trying to get his attention for a while crept to the front of his mind: 'He's leaving for Umbar tomorrow morning…'

Of course, the campaign against the Corsairs! He could certainly not afford to miss the departure! He threw back the blanket, leapt up and quickly had to sit down again when the nausea hit him.

Let's try that again a little slower, he thought.

Finduilas smiled again and handed him a steaming cup. "Here, drink this. It'll bring you around again. My grandmother swore on this recipe."

Aragorn drank the hot broth and felt some life return to him. He handed her the empty cup. "Thank you."

"Go on then, I should hurry, if I was you."

As Aragorn put on his boots and prepared to leave the room, he found the door blocked by Denethor. He looks just like I feel, Aragorn thought as he was grabbed by the shoulder.

"Thorongil. We will never. Ever. Mention this again. To anyone. Ever. Understood?"

Aragorn looked into his bloodshed eyes and couldn't help but smile. "My lips are sealed."

The smile continued to linger for a while as he sped down the corridor, on his way to bring death and destruction to the rebels in Umbar.


End file.
